The passage from adolescence to adulthood, the end of school, the discovery of the first relationships, the doubt about which career to follow and separation from friends. All of these conflicts common at the end of high school are told in a scenario that is both familiar and unusual in Salut, Mes Ami.es!, a film by Liliane Mutti that made it to the final of the competitive screening of the Festival de Cinema Itinerante da Língua Portuguesa. It is familiar because it takes place in a brizolão in Rio de Janeiro, nickname given by the locals to the Integrated Public Education Centers (Cieps), a full-time public school model implemented by former governor Leonel Brizola and immortalized by the architectural project of Oscar Niemeyer and by the pedagogical ideal of Darcy Ribeiro. And it is unusual because this is the only French-speaking bilingual public school in Latin America. The documentary observes the third-year class of Ciep 449 Governador Leonel de Moura Brizola, in Niterói, in the metropolitan region of Rio, and exalts the public school as a space for care, socialization and class meeting, shortly after the return of face-to-face classes with the slowdown of the covid-19 pandemic. The masks are still on the faces of students and teachers, demarcating the time in which the story is told, but the lines and shots bring an adolescence that is both timeless and contemporary. Inspired by High School (1968), by Frederick Wiseman, the production team arrived before and left after the Ciep students for a month, in April 2022, following the reunion of this class with the school, already with the farewell on the horizon soon forward. If in 1968 the adolescence portrayed in its rite of passage had the spirit of change of that time, the director of the film defines that of our time as an antithesis. “This youth of 2022 is a youth undermining. It is a youth that takes on a government of darkness, that takes on a pandemic”, says Liliane Mutti. “When you’re a teenager, you have to live with others. Everyone does, but teenagers need to build their identity, fall in love. It’s a transition from childhood to adulthood, and that was very cruel. [pandemia] with them. This youth is very broken, but someone needs to look at it. I was very moved”, she reveals. Joy The meeting of these characters who could be melancholic in the classrooms and corridors of the school produces scenes of abundant joy, singing and choreographies. in addition to claiming behavioral changes in society, they already produce them, dealing with bisexual and homosexual relationships with the same naturalness as heterosexual ones. being filmed. To me, it was very clear that was what they chose to tell. This youth shows itself and is aware of the power of this. They are not victims, they are very perpetrators. And it was almost unanimity how this issue came up”, says the director. “I believe in this education that also happens in the corridors. I believe in this living, everyday education. For me, this is a theme of the school and for the school. And this is a school movie. I wanted to show these issues that appear in the individual, but that, in an intersection, you see something that is generational”, he adds. Daughter of a teacher and director of a public school, Liliane Mutti proposes with the film an enchantment with an education not public and free, but common, in the sense of attracting all social classes to the same space. of this teaching project. “The Cieps project was very much sabotaged due to class and racial issues. You didn’t want these people to have rights, and that’s very violent. The film has an optimism because it shows that, in addition to being possible, I chose to highlight it, because we cannot lose the dream of public school and also have to treat it as concrete. The challenge of the Ministry of Education is to make a public school that is not a patch, it is to make a public school where the middle and upper classes want to study, because it is so good”, he opines. Public education Even so, the director says that the filming material could have generated an opposite film, denouncing the precariousness of public education, which is only made worse by the performance of the servers that dedicate themselves to it. “This school is standing, the way it is protecting the essence of the Cieps, thanks to the teachers, thanks to the director”, he observes. The film’s participation in the Portuguese Language Itinerant Film Festival will guarantee its showing in movie theaters on the African continent after the competitive stage held in Portugal. Afterwards From that moment on, Liliane thinks about taking a tour of public schools in Brazil, taking the film to its true target audience: teenagers. “The intention of the film is the encounter. So where can this happen? In sessions at schools, where young people are. I’m thinking about an unconventional circulation with this film. I’ll think about how to get it to schools. Suddenly, if the minister sees it, it will help me to think about how to get to the schools, “she concludes.
Agência Brasil
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